Malta’s temples are older than Stonehenge and older than the pyramids. They went up between roughly 3600 and 2500 BC, built by people who left no writing behind. Then the whole culture stopped, quite suddenly, and nobody has settled on why.
Seven of the sites are listed together by UNESCO. They are not tidied up for visitors. A couple sit in open fields, one is under a housing estate, and the most remarkable one is underground.
The Hal Saflieni Hypogeum at Paola is a burial complex cut three storeys down into solid rock. It is the most extraordinary thing on the islands. Only a fixed number of people are let in each day to protect the air inside, so tickets go months ahead. Nothing else in Malta really needs booking. This does.
The Hypogeum sells out weeks ahead. The other temples take walk-ups all year.
The sites you can walk around
Ġgantija
Two temples stand inside one boundary wall. They are among the oldest free-standing buildings anywhere in the world. The name means giantess, which tells you what people made of the size of the stones.
This is the one that makes the dates sink in. Standing in front of a wall built a thousand years before the pyramids is not the same as reading the number.
What else to see in Gozo
Ħaġar Qim
It is on a south-facing slope looking out over the Mediterranean. A large tent structure covers it to keep the weather off the softer limestone.
The setting does a lot of the work here: open sky, the sea below you, and the little island of Filfla out on the horizon.
Fitting it into a day
What they cost
Ġgantija is €10 and the ticket includes Ta’ Kola Windmill nearby. Ħaġar Qim and Mnajdra share one site and one €10 ticket, so do not leave after seeing only the first of them. Tarxien is €6. The Hypogeum is €35, sells out well ahead, and does not admit children under six. Every price is on one page, along with the days when everything closes.
Mnajdra
It sits a few hundred metres below Ħaġar Qim and shares the same ticket. Mnajdra is built so that the sunrise at the equinoxes and the solstices falls on particular stones inside the temple.
Whatever they meant by it, it was measured, deliberate and repeated year after year. Stand still for a moment and take that in.
The finds, in Valletta
Tarxien
This is the decorated one: spiral patterns, carved animals, and the bottom half of a huge statue whose top half has never turned up.
It sits surrounded by ordinary houses, and that is half the fun of it. You come round a corner past parked cars and there it is.
What is on while you are here
The Ħal Saflieni Hypogeum
This one is not above ground. It is a burial complex cut three levels into the rock and in use from about 4000 BC. The remains of thousands of people were found in it. Nothing else like it survives anywhere.
Numbers are limited every day to protect the air inside, so it sells out weeks ahead. Book before you travel rather than when you arrive, and expect no photography underground.
Why it costs thirty five euroBook on Heritage Malta
The two quieter temples
Check before you travel
- Ta’ Hagrat, Mġarr
- This temple is small, early and very quiet. It opens for limited hours, so check first.
- Skorba, Mġarr
- There is less to look at here than at the others, but archaeologically it is one of the most important sites. The layers found here set the dates used at every other site.
Getting the most out of them
Go early or go late. Ħaġar Qim and Mnajdra sit on an open south-facing slope with almost no shade, and the middle of a July day is brutal. The National Museum of Archaeology in Valletta holds all the finds, including the Sleeping Lady from the Hypogeum. Visit it before or after the sites to tie everything together.
Nearly all of these are run by Heritage Malta, which sets the prices, the opening hours and the multi-site pass. Check there before you travel, especially for the smaller sites and in winter.
Heritage Malta sells the tickets to the sites themselves. Guided days that take in several temples at once are sold separately, and you can book a temples tour through Klook.